South Australia Part 1

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4-5 Mar - Penola/Coonawarra

We drove from Halls gap along the picturesque Southern Grampian ranges that were imposing in their shepherding all on the road South. Turning right into Dalkeith, we were now on the Mary McKillop tourist way. Passing the kitsch attempt at giant wool bails, attached to a roadhouse to entice tourist in so they by tacky souvenirs and overpriced wool products, we wondered when the Giant Nun would come into view. (MM is Australia’s only nomination for canonisation into sainthood). The big nun is a missed opportunity as we travelled into the well-restored town of Penola with its sandstone buildings including the MM school building and Petticoat Lane. Penola is also the nearest main town to the world famous Coonawarra wine region.
Here we also planned to meet Ben and Tina as they travelled across from the Limestone Coast as they return east from over 4 years on the road. The best landmark is inevitably a pub, so we picked the Prince of Wales for the rendezvous and cold beers on a warm day. We then checked into the only caravan park in town for 2 nights so we could take in some of the cellar doors.
The caravan park owner warned us off the Prince of Wales and recommended we head to the more attractively restored Oakleigh Hotel. It was a rather good meal. The next day when visiting the Kidman Winery, the owner warned us off the Oakleigh Hotel and suggested that despite the RSL club architecture and it appearing somewhat run down, that the Prince of Wales was the only place to eat in town.
Prior to trying the POW option, we visited the prestige Pentley cellar door and followed it up with lobster bisque at the local gourmet café. We rested up the afternoon to ready for our tilt at the POW pub meal. It was a photo finish but the POW seemed to have it by a nose and they had pale ale on tap to boot.
T

6-7 Mar - Robe

We drove north to check out Naracoorte and stock up on groceries. We met up with Ben and Tina once again in Robe - a small seaside village with an interesting history on the Limestone Coast. Chinese landed here during the gold rush and walked 100 miles to avoid the Victorian imposed miner’s tax. We drove out past the old convict gaol to the large red and white striped obelisk (a marine navigational aid). The water surrounding the cape is aqua marine due to the dissolved limestone. We watched a seal play in the rocky channels below us.
Tuesday (7 Mar) we went 4WD sand dune touring with Ben and Tina’s “Lenny Land cruiser” through the Little Dip National Park. We lay in the flat op in the back of “Lenny” with pillows for padding as we rolled and bumped from side to side as the Landcruiser lurched through the dunes. We resettled the stomachs with sparkling ale on the balcony of the Caledonian Hotel, overlooking the plush bowling greens to the azure blue water of the bay.
T

8-10 Mar - Adelaide

We farewelled Ben, Tina and Lenny and wished them well for the final stage of their epic journey around Oz. Armed with some good tips of “the places to see (and shit-holes to avoid)” we drove from Robe to Adelaide passed the impressive Coorong sand dunes and its coastal lagoons. With a small detour through Hahndorf for a German (Hof Brau) Wit bier and the obligatory purchase of Leanne’s prized Dutch liquorice, we then headed into Adelaide to catch up with Frank, Francis and Liam.
Thursday 9-Mar, I visited the new Terminal at Adelaide Airport with Frank. It was a big coincidence that there was a big announcement regarding the future of aircraft maintenance in Sydney. This had implications for careful consideration of expressing my interest in taking a redundancy.
I then met Leanne in the city after her day of exploring the Adelaide CBD. We returned to the car that was parked in what we assumed to be a secure public car park off Rundle Mall. The car had been broken into and all of Leanne’s clothes were stolen from the back seat. They also took our camera but a security guard recovered this from a stairwell. After reporting to an uncommissioned, cocky officer fresh from the academy we returned the car to Frank’s so it could be secured and travelled back into Town to take in the Adelaide Fringe festival comedy show by Daniel Kitson which we had already purchased tickets to. It was a great escape from the events of the day and Daniel Kitson’s show was articulate and witty with an excellent command of the English language and its quirks with acute observations of the world around him.
Friday was spent shopping for replacements for Leanne’s (extensive and meticulously planned) travel wardrobe. This was tiring on a hot day but I was left with no doubt that despite the immediate assumption that shopping for an entire wardrobe would be an activity any female would relish, It was not the case as the pressure to complete this task in one day without the research, planning and diligent assembly of such a wardrobe over a given time that would cover all seasons and numerous sales was not possible.
I was moral support for most of the day until I suggested that I look after the accumulating shopping bags in the cool safety of a bar in the Austral Hotel with sparkling ale and the newspaper. When the task was finally completed, we celebrated with a meal of muscles at the Belgian Bier Café.
T

11-13 Mar - The Flinders Ranges

Deciding not to let the little break-in incident and impending repairs stop our travels we decided to hire a “backpacker” campervan and head to the Flinders Ranges. First things first though, before picking up the van and stocking up on food supplies we had breakfast overlooking beautiful Brighton beach with Frank, Francis and Liam. Not a bad way to start the day.
With our backpacker van in tow we headed towards the Flinders Ranges for our first look at the “Australian Outback”. Our first afternoon of driving took us through the outer Adelaide suburbs, past the infamous Snowtown, to Melrose, “the gateway to the Flinders Ranges”. Melrose is a tiny, historic town with two pubs, a bowling green, an old brewery and a caravan park. The town is tucked way below Mount Remarkable, which affords great views at sunset when watched from the terrace (with beer in hand, of course) of the Northern Star Hotel. It was starting to get warm now, and staying warm… the lowest temperature we had in the ranges was here when it dropped to 26° overnight. After converting the van from bedroom to travelling machine, we headed north towards Hawker via Quorn. After refuelling (both the van and us) we then continued north to the Flinders Ranges proper and our first good look at some of the red mountain ranges up close. Rippling ranges striped red, orange and yellows and silver-green bushes dotted the landscape making it easy to understand how the traditional dot paintings came about.
Our first stop was Arkaroo Rock, a shelter used by the local Koori’s for thousands of years. It also included rock paintings, which describe the local dreaming story for the creation; of what us white fellas call Wilpena Pound. The Wilpena pound in dreaming are two snakes that after surrounding a corroborie and eating most of the participants were so full that they stayed where they rested and turned to rock becoming the edges of the pound. We had planned to walk out to Wilpena Pound today but after the 40°, energy sapping walk out to Arkaroo Rock we decided to check into the Wilpena Pound campground and spend some quality time in the pool instead.
We did get up early the next morning (13 Mar) to beat the heat and the other tourists to check out the view from the lookout. The walk took us through the traditional entry to the pound past the homestead built by the family who tried to farm the pound (so named because of the way the sharp mountains encircle and enclose the 80 or so hectares to form a natural compound). Once inside Wilpena Pound it looks more like a meteorite strike rather than the result of major earth upheavals and folding 300 million years ago.
The local geological processes are so well demonstrated and described in the nearby Brachina Gorge. We dragged our campervan for a couple of hours through the rough dirt roads north of Wilpena Pound through Bunyeroo Gorge to Brachina Gorge to the amazed expressions of some of our 4WD travellers (and the relief of some other travellers in similar vehicular circumstances).
Travelling through Brachina Gorge is not only spectacular; steep walls of layered sedimentary rock in stripes of orange, red, white and black, interspersed with fossils, and trees growing from cracks; but its also a drive through time with each section of the gorge showing different eras of our geological history. This history is shown in the folding of the earth and subsequent erosion so that we can read the rock layers like we read the rings in a tree. A series of very informative boards help the traveller to navigate their way through time and they also managed to answer our questions on how the pound and nearby ranges were created (the National Park info centre didn’t have anything!).
Our drive out of Brachina Gorge had us wishing we had our “Jenny” back as our Forrester would have managed the corrugations a whole lot more comfortably than our campervan; and in half the time. It also didn’t set us up to well for our next stop, the Parachilna Hotel, home of feral food. The pub came well recommended from the “Ben and Tina’s travel guide” but our stomaches were so well shaken that neither of us could do the feral mixed grill (FMG: roo, emu, camel, pig) and we instead settled on a roo burger each and a quandong pie for dessert. We did see the FMG come out to a few other customers and it looked pretty tasty - but the roo burger wasn’t a bad substitute. We’re the only country in the world that eats its national emblem - the coat of arms.
We then had a leisurely drive back as we travelled back along Parachilna Gorge to Blinman and then onto Rawnsley Park Station for the night. We had a lovely evening in our campervan (converted to kitchen/dining room mode) watching the sunset over Rawnsley Bluff (the southern most mountain of the Wilpena Pound range) and drinking one of our bottles from the Coonawarra.
L

14-15 Mar - Clare Valley

After the heat and the red dust of the Flinders, we thought a little sojourn to the Clare Valley might be nice (and it was almost 2 weeks since we’d been in a wine region - geez what’s got into us?). We took a different route down from the Flinders Ranges whi

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Photos

Robe
Dune exploring through Little Dip NPcurtesy of Ben + Tina and Lennie the troupie

Flinders Ranges
Brachina Gorge

Flinders Ranges 2
Brachina Gorge

Parachilna Hotel
the only country who eats its national emblem